Lucinda Carspecken – författare

In An Unreal Estate, Lucinda Carspecken takes an in-depth look at Lothlorien, a Southern Indiana nature sanctuary, sustainable camping ground, festival site, collective residence, and experiment in ecological building, stewardship, and organization. Carspecken notes the way fiction and reality intertwine on this piece of land and argues that examples such as Lothlorien have the power to be a force for social change. Lothlorien's organization and social norms are in sharp contrast with its surrounding communities. As a unique enclave within a larger society, it offers to the latter both an implicit critique and a cluster of alternative values and lifestyles. In addition, it has created a niche where some participants change, grow, and find empowerment in an environment that is accepting of difference—particularly in areas of religion and sexual orientation.

Drawing on the works of ten scholars and public intellectuals ranging over 200 years, this book foregrounds ways of knowing that include but go beyond the cognitive.The book explores the work of Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, M. N. Srinivas, Barbara Myerhoff, Orlando Fals Borda, Ronald Takaki and Nawal El Saadawi. The author discusses their multifaceted ethnographic practices and argues that such practices are still under-acknowledged in contemporary research in comparison to cognition and categorization. These scholars were outsiders to their societies in a variety of ways. They highlighted power imbalances in the perception and representation of one group by another and brought direct experience, emotion, narrative, imagination, recognition, self-reflection, activism and cultural humility into their writing, in addition to rationality. The book engages with the authors and their ideas in the context of their times and places. It also reclaims them as methodological predecessors, noting their contributions to what educational ethnography has been and what it could be in the future.Expanding the canon of social research history and providing insight into unique methodological forms, this text will be valuable for scholars and postgraduate students with interests in ethnography, as well as the history of research, anthropology and qualitative methods more broadly.

Drawing on the works of ten scholars and public intellectuals ranging over 200 years, this book foregrounds ways of knowing that include but go beyond the cognitive.The book explores the work of Harriet Martineau, Jane Addams, W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, M. N. Srinivas, Barbara Myerhoff, Orlando Fals Borda, Ronald Takaki and Nawal El Saadawi. The author discusses their multifaceted ethnographic practices and argues that such practices are still under-acknowledged in contemporary research in comparison to cognition and categorization. These scholars were outsiders to their societies in a variety of ways. They highlighted power imbalances in the perception and representation of one group by another and brought direct experience, emotion, narrative, imagination, recognition, self-reflection, activism and cultural humility into their writing, in addition to rationality. The book engages with the authors and their ideas in the context of their times and places. It also reclaims them as methodological predecessors, noting their contributions to what educational ethnography has been and what it could be in the future.Expanding the canon of social research history and providing insight into unique methodological forms, this text will be valuable for scholars and postgraduate students with interests in ethnography, as well as the history of research, anthropology and qualitative methods more broadly.

We conceived of this book with the idea that critical explorations into the key philosophical issues in qualitative research could throw light on distortions, power relations, hidden assumptions and possibilities within the field, and could ultimately provide the groundwork for needed change and new directions. We wanted to do this with rigor, getting underneath the contemporary divisions in qualitative research, first building up philosophy and core concepts and then returning to specific practices in qualitative research. The book, in a way, then, is a statement of hope.We have seen many promising trends in the last few decades as academics from the groups who have traditionally been studied and spoken for in the past – indigenous peoples, women, minorities, gays and lesbians, for example – make their voices heard, as the «other» speaks back, and as the uses to which research is put receive more scrutiny. We see signs that qualitative research may begin to turn the tables on its own history and become a tool for emancipation rather than its opposite.The book is divided into five sections which each focus on different aspects of qualitative methodological practices and the concepts which are inherent in the practices themselves. The editors of this book are experienced with conducting qualitative research and two of the editors teach multiple university courses on research methodology and the social and epistemological theories associated with inquiry. Many of the books available for our courses divide qualitative research into a number of disparate types and then explain philosophical and epistemological positions according to those divisions. In our opinion, such approaches inadequately confront orienting questions of human knowledge implicit to all forms of social research. We intend to produce a new book that exemplifies theory and methods in qualitative research in relation to a sound presentation of social-theoretical core concepts.

We conceived of this book with the idea that critical explorations into the key philosophical issues in qualitative research could throw light on distortions, power relations, hidden assumptions and possibilities within the field, and could ultimately provide the groundwork for needed change and new directions. We wanted to do this with rigor, getting underneath the contemporary divisions in qualitative research, first building up philosophy and core concepts and then returning to specific practices in qualitative research. The book, in a way, then, is a statement of hope.We have seen many promising trends in the last few decades as academics from the groups who have traditionally been studied and spoken for in the past – indigenous peoples, women, minorities, gays and lesbians, for example – make their voices heard, as the «other» speaks back, and as the uses to which research is put receive more scrutiny. We see signs that qualitative research may begin to turn the tables on its own history and become a tool for emancipation rather than its opposite.The book is divided into five sections which each focus on different aspects of qualitative methodological practices and the concepts which are inherent in the practices themselves. The editors of this book are experienced with conducting qualitative research and two of the editors teach multiple university courses on research methodology and the social and epistemological theories associated with inquiry. Many of the books available for our courses divide qualitative research into a number of disparate types and then explain philosophical and epistemological positions according to those divisions. In our opinion, such approaches inadequately confront orienting questions of human knowledge implicit to all forms of social research. We intend to produce a new book that exemplifies theory and methods in qualitative research in relation to a sound presentation of social-theoretical core concepts.